Looking for an experienced Houston Slip and Fall Lawyer? While slip and fall accidents may not sound as threatening as car accidents, these incidents have resulted in several accidental deaths and even more visits to the emergency room each year. If you’re lucky enough to make it to the hospital, there’s the issue of the piling medical bills. We know just how expensive medical treatment can be, and we also know it’s not fair for you to bear the expenses when the fault of your slip and fall-related injuries rests with another.
The Texas law protects those who have been victims of slip and fall accidents on someone else’s property and helps them seek fair personal injury claims. If you have been injured due to another’s negligence in Houston, it’s best to seek the help of personal injury lawyers as soon as possible. Contact Jerome O. Fjeld to receive maximum compensation for all the severe injuries you sustained due to a slip and fall accident.
We provide expert legal advice to the person injured and represent them before the insurance companies and the court of law, should things come to that.
Common Types of Slip and Fall Injuries
Slip and fall accidents could lead to several kinds of injuries, depending upon the cause of the fall, the type of surface you fell on, your posture during the fall, and much more. The age of the fall victim also plays a critical role in the degree of fall injury you sustain. The extent of the injury could range from minor to severe. While there are several types of slip and fall injuries, some of the most common injuries are:
- Soft tissue injury
- Broken bones
- Hip fractures
- Traumatic brain injury
- Cuts and bruises
- Sprained wrists or ankles
- Knee injury
- Neck or shoulder injury
- Head injury
- Jaw injury
- Skull fractures
Each of these injuries has certain repercussions. Even if you didn’t suffer a visible injury, experts suggest dropping by the hospital nevertheless. Soft tissue injuries, for instance, do not feel until days or weeks after the fall. An injured person could end up either with minor sprains in the ankle or the wrists or sustain tears in ligaments and tendons.
In either of these cases, you need to get yourself checked by doctors to ensure that the temporary pain of the soft tissue injury doesn’t translate into chronic pain. Naturally, you would have to pay up the hospital bills. Thankfully, the Texas law on slip and fall injuries could help get the compensation for your serious injuries, provided that you prove negligence on the property owner’s part, which is easier said than done. The best course of action in the event of such an accident is to consult a fall accident attorney and get immediate legal representation.
Types of Slip and Fall Accident
The main cause of a slip and fall accident can be the dangerous condition of the property and the failure of the property owner to give a warning about the same. Here are some common types of fall hazards and slip and fall accidents that people can encounter on commercial properties having dangerous conditions.
Wet Floor
The property’s floors could be wet due to being recently mopped by a janitor. If the floor has been cleaned, it is the property owner’s duty to put a warning sign that says “Caution, Wet Floor” for the visitors to know to steer clear of the wet floor or proceed at their own risk. If there was no sign and a slip and fall accident occurred, you could demand compensation from the property owner.
Damaged Floor
If the floor of the property is damaged, uneven, or has defective and missing tiles, you could be prone to slipping due to the dangerous condition of the surface. The responsibility of the accident resulting from the damaged floor would rest with the owner for their failure to maintain sound floor conditions.
Careless Staff
The property’s staff must ensure that safe conditions are maintained all the time. This means they are responsible for picking up objects from the floor that could cause an accident or cleaning up spilled liquid, leading to the dangerous condition of the floor.
Why You Should Get a Lawyer For Slip and Fall Accident
Slip and fall accidents are a highly complex segment of cases as certain property owners would hire the best lawyers in town to defend their negligence and wrongdoing. These lawyers would use every trick in the book to pin the entire blame of the accident on you and ensure that no accountability falls on their client. Hospitals would do no favors to your purses either when you enter its threshold with bruises and serious injuries, in some cases, even traumatic brain injuries or spinal cord injuries.
Only when you prove negligence on the property owner’s part would you receive the compensation you deserve. This is where slip and fall accident attorneys could help you. Proving the property owner’s guilt would require you to have extensive legal expertise and knowledge of the local statutes. Here is how slip and fall accident lawyers could help you win a favorable settlement.
Proving property owner’s negligence
The number one challenge you’ll face in the pursuit of a fair slip and fall accident claim from the insurance companies is proving the property owner’s negligence, who might stop at nothing in evincing that you were the one at fault. You would have to provide evidence by analyzing the accident and gathering the statements of the witnesses, if there were any. This is where a slip and fall attorney can help make things easier for you. They can do all the legwork and build a solid case on your behalf to present either in front of the insurance companies to get a fair settlement or before a judge.
Informing you of your legal options
There are many legal paths you can take to receive justice to get a fall claim. A slip and fall lawyer would enlighten you about all the legal options you have and the advantages and pitfalls of each. Fall attorneys would also guide you on how you can make the most of the legal options to get what you want. You can then make an informed decision on how you want to proceed. If you require legal consultancy services, contact the office of Jerome O. Fjeld, one of the best Houston slip and fall accident attorneys working in Texas. With an experience of nearly two decades, we have helped several injury victims get justice after being wronged due to another’s negligence and carelessness.
Calculating personal damage
If you’re looking to get compensation, you’d have to give a number to the insurance company. The number you give needs to be meticulously calculated and should cover all the damages you incurred right after the accident and the expenses you would incur in the future due to the personal injury. The aim is to ensure that you’re financially covered in the long run. However, calculating the damages can be extremely difficult. You need to have the legal experience of competent fall attorneys to estimate potential future damages and quantify them for the insurance companies. For this, hiring a fall accident lawyer would become imperative; otherwise, you may get talked into settling for way less than what you deserve by the defendant’s insurance firm and lawyers.
Negotiation
Negotiation is an art that certain professionals take years to hone. When you’re up against the insurance company and want to opt for an out-of-court settlement on the injury claim, you’d require a skilled negotiator presenting your case and negotiating the terms of settlement that favor you the best. All the company’s efforts would force you to settle for less, so they don’t have to pay an obscenely high amount of compensation, even though that’s precisely what you are owed for the damages. But a skilled lawyer and negotiator would get you the settlement of your choice.
Representing you in court
At times, an out-of-court solution doesn’t pan out the way you hoped. The insurance company might challenge your proposed settlement and ask you to settle for a fraction of the total amount. We would advise you to hold your ground and take matters into court if the insurance company and the property owners refuse to budge. It’s in the courtroom where you would need a slip and fall lawyer the most. If you fight your case yourself, especially if you have no practical legal experience, you might run the risk of having your case dismissed and end up losing whatever you were gaining before too. On the other hand, a lawyer can take care of all the legal formalities, practical proceedings, and more to ensure that you’re effectively represented before the judge. Your lawyer’s efforts would be to consummately convince the judge of the wrongdoing and negligence on the property owner’s part and get you a favorable verdict.
Texas Laws On Slip and Fall Case
Texas laws help the injured person to get the compensation they deserve following a Houston slip and fall accident. Such cases fall into the premises liability law, which means that if you get injured on someone else’s property, the owner of the property would be obligated to pay for any damages that the victim sustains for failing to maintain the expected levels of safety standards.
However, proving personal injury in Texas in a premises liability law case can be difficult. You’d have to provide evidence for the property owner’s negligence and prove that it was the same negligence that caused your accident and nothing else. You also need to mind the slip and fall statute of limitation in Texas, which gives the victim of such cases a time limit for filing a personal injury lawsuit against the guilty party. In Texas, this time limit is two years.
Therefore, if you have any hope of receiving justice for yourself, you need to hire a slip and fall lawyer and file a lawsuit against the property owner within two years after the slip and fall incident. The time frame also applies if it was your property that got damaged due to the fall.
Filing a lawsuit can be tricky, especially if there is a time restraint. If you want to file a personal injury lawsuit against an individual, a private property owner, or a government body, then you need to schedule a consultation with Jerome O. Fjeld immediately. We would start by providing you with a free case review to kick things off. We would roughly go over the events that led up to your accident before delving into the specifics and helping you build a solid case for yourself.
Before we exhaust our legal options, we would try to reach an out-of-court settlement with the insurance company. For this, we would gather the evidence before approaching the insurance company to present your case. If the talks fail, we will help you file the lawsuit against the property owner and fight your case in the courtroom. Jerome O. Fjeld would have your back throughout the process, be it about paperwork or legwork.
Why You Should Choose Jerome O. Fjeld As Your Slip and Fall Lawyer
Jerome O. Fjeld has been practicing personal injury trial law for over 20 years and has helped several Houston slip and fall victims get the compensation and court verdict they deserve. We take cognizance of the trauma and losses an accident victim suffers right after the incident and the financial burden and losses they might suffer in the future.
We calculate the damages and approach the insurance with your personal injury claim, taking all the potential losses into account. In the insurance company’s office, you can count on us to negotiate your case with facts and figures to ensure that you get the fall injury claim settlement of your choice. While our efforts are dedicated to finding an out-of-court solution, if the company refuses to pay the fair amount, we take matters into court and guarantee that you are compensated for the following damages;
- Current and future medical bills
- Expenses for mental and physical therapy
- Lost wages and earning
- Loss of potential future earnings due to the accident
- Loss of bonus or pension
- Physical pain and suffering
- Mental anguish
- Damage to property (if any)
- Expenses of the funeral (In case the accident led to wrongful death)
Jerome O. Fjeld will employ all the resources at our disposal to prove that another’s negligence has indeed wronged our clients. As a skilled litigator, we would present solid pieces of evidence to prove the negligence of the property owner, resulting in your slip and fall, and litigate your case with all our might before the judge and the jury. Considering our track record in the courtroom (having won millions in compensation from personal injury cases), you can depend on us entirely. Contact Jerome O. Fjeld today for a free case review of your slip and fall. We can begin working on the case as soon as we agree upon the terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it mandatory to hire a slip and fall lawyer to get compensation?
If you’re wondering whether you need to hire an experienced lawyer to compensate for the suffered injuries, then no, it is not mandatory to lawyer up. You can file a fall lawsuit or a personal injury claim all by yourself. You could even do all the negotiating with the insurance companies yourself and present your case in court if need be. There are no rules or regulations that will stop you from fighting your own case. However, the legal proceedings that ensue such accidents can be extremely hectic and daunting, especially if you’re someone with no legal expertise or negotiation skills. If you choose to file a lawsuit, you will be battling with the property owner’s insurance company and their team of lawyers.
The backbreaking work of the legal proceedings could prove to be physically and mentally exhausting, not to mention resource-draining. There is no guarantee that you would win the case even after all the efforts, as a slip and fall case can be hard to prove. But an experienced team of personal injury lawyers can help you with the legal formalities without a hitch. This is why you are suggested to hire fall lawyers after a Houston slip and fall accident.
Is a slip and fall accident hard to prove?
Yes, Houston slip and fall accidents can be hard to prove since the accident only involves the fall accident victims and no one else. The tricky part is to prove liability and that it was indeed the property owner’s negligence that led to your serious injury and not the injured person’s fault. The property owner could avoid accountability by saying that your clumsiness or inattentiveness led to the slip and fall. It would rest on you to prove that the unsafe property conditions resulted in your injuries. While such cases may be hard to win, slip and fall accident cases can be won if an experienced personal injury lawyer fights for you.
What damages can I recover from a slip and fall case?
Following a slip and fall accident, you can recover the money spent on hospital bills and any wages that you lose due to the accident with an experienced team of personal injury lawyers. If you’re unable to go to work as a result of the accident, you can ask for the compensation of those lost earnings as well. In some cases, the property owners would also be liable to pay for the mental anguish that you experience.
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